At long last, the labor organizing book talk & live podcast recording in a night club with alcohol and obscenities that everyone has been waiting for.
Organizer Jane McAlevey in conversation with comedians Nato Green & Francesca Fiorentini. Jane’s new book out from Harper Collins called “A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy” provides an excellent occasion to upend the normal book chat with two comedians.
Bios:
JANE MCALEVEY is an organizer, author, and scholar. She is currently a Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center, part of the Institute for Labor & Employment Relations. Her third book, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy, argues that despite, if not because of, the withering attacks on working people from the US Supreme Court, conservative state and local governments, and the corporate class, the survival of American democracy depends on rebuilding unions.
Her first book, Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell), published by Verso Press, was named the “most valuable book of 2012” by The Nation Magazine. Her second book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, published by Oxford University Press, was released late in 2016. From 2010-2015, she earned a Ph.D., followed by a two-year Post Doc at the Harvard University Law School. She is a regular commentator on radio and TV.
San Francisco native NATO GREEN is the country’s only semi-functional hybrid of comedian, writer, and union organizer.
Nato Green released his second comedy album The Whiteness Album on Blonde Medicine Records, appeared in the film Sorry to Bother You. The Whiteness Album was named by the NPR show Bullseye with Jesse Thorn one of the best comedy albums of 2018.
Nato’s writing has appeared in the LA Review of Books, the San Francisco Examiner, In These Times, VICE, Truthdig, Huffington Post, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Rumpus, and The Bold Italic.
His first comedy album, The Nato Green Party, was released in 2012 by Rooftop Comedy. Nato has been named San Francisco’s Best Comedian by the SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Huffington Post, SFist, and CBS. Nato is the creator of Iron Comic, the hit Iron Chef-spoofing comedy game show. His comedy has been featured in Audible Comedy Originals including the Comedy Show Show, the Guest List, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Sounds Like America. He’s appeared on numerous podcasts including RISK!, the Dork Forest, Pod Damn America, WTF with Marc Maron, Put Your Hands Together, WBUR’s You’re the Expert, KQED’s Truth Be Told, KALW’s Kamau Right Now, Porchlight, Muni Diaries, and Fake the Nation with Negin Farsad.
Nato wrote for Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell on FX, the show that the New York Times recently called “five years ahead of its time,” and toured nationally with W. Kamau Bell & Janine Brito as Laughter Against the Machine.
Nato has also been a union organizer for twenty years, working as an organizer, union rep, and negotiator with UFCW, ILWU, CNA, SEIU Local 1021, and founding Young Workers United, the country’s first worker center for young and immigrant workers in the low-wage service sector. The Episcopal Archbishop once called him the antichrist.
Journalist, activist and stand up comedian FRANCESCA FIORENTINI has spent most of her life comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable — from the streets to the screen to the stage. Most recently, she hosted “Red White & Who” on MSNBC.
As a host and producer, Francesca helped Al Jazeera Media Network successfully launch the online news channel AJ+ in 2013. She has captured online audiences with viral hits like “The Real Deal with the U.S. Mexico Border”and “How America is Already Socialist.”
In the Spring of 2016 Francesca launched Al Jazeera’s first comedy show. Newsbroke is a weekly scripted deep-dive into nuclear power, the war in Afghanistan, immigration policy and other totally non serious topics.
Francesca has also been a correspondent with “Explorer” on the National Geographic Channel since 2016. For her NatGeo work on draconian abortion laws in El Salvador she won a Media Excellence award from Planned Parenthood in 2018.
Francesca regularly speaks dick jokes to power on stage as a stand up comic. She has been featured on the podcast Lovett or Leave It (2018), the BBC Arts Hour (2018), and is a regular contributor to The Young Turks.